New data from the MAVEN probe show that the atmosphere of Mars contains not only hydrogen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but also a kind of ribbons of metal ions that hit the red planet along with micrometeorites, NASA reports.
“MAVEN was the first to directly record the permanent presence of metal ions in the ionosphere of any planet other than Earth. Metal ions live in the atmosphere for an extremely long time, and during this time they manage to travel long distances under the influence of winds and electric fields. This allows them to be used to observe air currents in the ionosphere,”says Joseph Grebowsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
According to planetary scientists, in the distant past, about four billion years ago, Mars was very similar to Earth. It had a thick atmosphere, oceans of water, and a fairly mild climate that made it potentially suitable for the origin of life. After about a billion years, Mars turned into a lifeless desert - its atmosphere evaporated into space, and its water reserves either evaporated, or froze and were hidden under the sands of the red planet.
Why did this happen? Scientists today think that the reason was that Mars, unlike Earth and Jupiter, does not have its own magnetic field, or it disappeared in the first several hundred million years of the planet's life. As a result, the particles of the solar wind, colliding with the atmosphere of Mars, literally "stripped" it and deprived the planet of 99% of its air reserves.
In 2013, NASA sent the MAVEN probe to Mars to solve the mystery of when and how the atmosphere of Mars disappeared, and to search for possible causes of this cataclysm. Immediately after MAVEN's arrival on the red planet, scientists began to detect strange traces of metals and dust in the upper atmosphere that they did not expect to see.
According to Grebowski, they initially believed that the source of these materials was the tail of Comet Siding Spring, through which Mars flew in October 2014, but the next two years of observations showed that ions of sodium, magnesium, iron and other metals did not disappear anywhere. This prompted scientists to look for a potential source of these substances on Mars and beyond.
After analyzing the data collected by MAVEN, the NASA scientific team came to the conclusion that the source of the metals is the Martian micrometeorites, constantly burning in the atmosphere of Mars. They contain small amounts of various metals that are ionized during the combustion of a meteorite and continue to float in the planet's ionosphere for a very long time.
Scientists believe that similar processes should occur in the atmospheres of other planets of the solar system. This factor, according to planetary scientists, should be taken into account when creating descent vehicles, since such a layer of metals in the atmosphere can interfere with the operation of communication systems with the Earth or probes in orbit.
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Interestingly, these ions, unlike their counterparts on Earth, are organized into beautiful layers only in certain parts of the Martian atmosphere, located above those regions of Mars, in the rocks of which the remnants of the primary magnetic field of the red planet are preserved. Scientists are now investigating these differences between Earth and Mars, trying to understand how they might affect the process of evaporation of the Martian atmosphere.
